


The Barnes Boys problem

by kattnmaus



Series: Aftershock Tales [1]
Category: Captain America (Comics), Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Dimension Travel, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-10
Updated: 2015-08-10
Packaged: 2018-04-13 22:18:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4539465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kattnmaus/pseuds/kattnmaus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The destruction of AIM's dimensional gateway prototype has caused unforeseen complications, as the distortion wave from its collapse displaces dozens of persons from parallel worlds into theirs.  Suddenly, not only are there other Avengers roaming loose, but multiples of the same people, many with different lives and at different points of their own histories dumped on their doorstep confused and wanting to go home.</p>
<p>And unfortunately, this also means that there are now FIVE James Buchanan Barnes all in one place...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Barnes Boys problem

“No”

Tony Stark stared at the monitor, refusing to allow himself to accept what he was seeing as reality. They'd dealt with plenty of interdimensional incidents recently, hell he currently had a short brown-eyed alcoholic version of himself camped out in his guest room as proof of that, but this...

“Oh my god how many of them ARE there?”

“Currently three new ones, at least that we know of.” Steve, his Steve Rogers thankfully, the older and wiser of all the Steves he'd come to know from various incidents recently, stood beside him, arms crossed as he eyed the monitor warily. “Buck's on his way with Cap, but...”

“Yeah... I mean, yeah....” Stark trailed off, watching as one of the figures on the monitors flipped a double-deuce to another, and an argument broke out. 

“Ah hell...” Rogers muttered, heading for the door in a hurry.

“Well, what did you expect, leaving three Barneses alone in a room together?” Stark called after him as the door slammed.

\--=--

“...And your little...” the rest was cut off by a door slamming open, the speaker pausing, finger still pointed angrily in midair as the others looked vaguely amused. The young man in blue stood up straighter upon recognizing the older blonde man, his almost-twin in the chair remained seated, boots propped carelessly on the edge of the table. The third in the corner eyed him oddly with crossed arms as he leaned against the wall. Rogers closed the door much more gently than he'd opened it, looking from person to person as it clicked shut behind him.

“There a problem in here?” he asked, and the young man fidgeted uncomfortably.

“No sir, that was being a...” he began, and the seated one barked a laugh and cast him a glare. Steve sighed.

“Bucky...” he said softly with an air of vaguely fond weariness. Always, no matter the universe, no matter the time period, hell no matter the species even, there would always be a Bucky Barnes ready to get himself into some sort of trouble. Theirs was no exception, and Steve was just waiting for the look on his face when he saw the latest crop of interdimensional dropoffs on their doorstep had not one but three of himself this time. How the world hadn't imploded yet from Barnes-overload having a grand total of FIVE James Buchanan Barnes currently occupying it was a miracle.

“All right, let's set some ground rules and do introductions, since we can't call all of you the same thing.” Rogers said, gesturing the pacing youth in blue to sit down at the conference table. He eyed his black-clad doppelganger warily before sitting at the near end of the table as far away from him as possible.  
“Let's start with you then. Preferred name, age if you want, date when you left your world, anything else you think might be important,” Rogers said.

“James Buchanan Barnes, I guess you can call me Bucky, age 18, and that guy's an asshole,” he said, pointing at the seated one in black, who smiled and gave a short unpleasant laugh.

“How about you then, son?” Steve asked, and was treated to a smirk and a glare.

“My name is Yasha, and I kill people. I don't care my age, probably more than his though.” he said with a slight accent, gesturing vaguely at the Bucky in blue with a gloved hand that made soft mechanical sounds. Steve cringled slightly at the vaguely russian accent and the lazy english, his gut turning at the whir and the dull thud when 'Yasha' set his hand down on the edge of the table. Steve looked up to find the older one with the highly visible silver arm in the corner staring at Yasha with an unreadable expression for a few moments before he sighed and ducked beneath his unkempt curtain of hair with a weak half-shrug.

“I... the other one, he called me Bucky, the one I know, not you,” he said softly, “I'm still figuring out if its me or not... it's like... wearin someone's old suit, don't quite fit the same as it should.” he said, soft voice a little rough from disuse. Rogers quirked an eyebrow faintly, he almost swore he heard an old neighborhood accent weaving in an out of the man's speech. 

“You got something else we should call you then?” Rogers asked gently, and the other man shrugged lop-sidedly.

“Barnes 'll do, I guess,” he half-mumbled. Yasha rolled his eyes and muttered something in russian and the older man stilled with a icy blue glare at the younger man. He bit out a response that had the younger lifting an eyebrow, then shrugging nonchalantly before he said something obviously glib and unpleasant back to Barnes. 

“You would, if Hydra had been frying your brain like an egg every few days for the past seventy years and turning you into a popsicle in between murder missions,” Barnes ground out. 

“Then advantage Yasha, for not remembering shit to begin with and not being barbequed by soviets either, 'cause I do my job right,” he said smugly, hands folded on the table edge. Barnes glare went from dark to coldly-burning-wrath-of-god, and even Steve had the urge to slap the stupid out of the kid for a moment before he reminded himself who and what Yasha was.

Thankfully, the door opened behind him and the situation was distracted if not defused as his own Barnes appeared, still wearing his costume, the shield hanging on his arm... oh wait, it was the other one then, the one who was still Captain America in his own world. It was getting confusing even for him, so many of them around all of a sudden. Their Bucky was behind him, long-sleeve black jacket with the SHIELD eagles on the shoulders thrown on over his 'Winter Soldier' armor today, still wearing his domino mask too. Had they been working when he'd called? Steve suddenly wondered why they were both kitted up for combat and looked like they'd arrived in a rush. 

The two of them had strangely become friends after 'Captain' Barnes had arrived on their world, and had worked together often, especially on the mysterious assassin-for-hire case that had revealed the existence of Yasha, and started the search for other doppelgangers in earnest. Tony was right though, they really should have known better than to leave them alone in a room together, especially with Yasha, who was essentially all of Bucky's worst qualities wrapped up in an asshole-flavored amoral amnesiac shell that had a seemingly endless supply of knives hidden somewhere no matter how many times they searched and disarmed him or scanned him for weapons, one of which he suddenly had in hand at the sight of the Captain version of himself.

Oh, goody.

“Stand down,” Steve said, and the young man spat something foul that only sounded worse for being said in russian at him. He put on his best 'The Captain is Not Amused' face and tried again to no avail as Yasha had absolutely zero care in the world for the intimidation ability of Captain America and a whole lot of dislike for the two men who'd just entered the room.

“Jeez, you let him loose without a sedative? You're brave, Rogers,” Captain Barnes said, nodding at Yasha as he held his shield in what could loosely be called a “casually defensive” position, hoping the younger man wasn't in the mood to become an active threat.

“Sit” Steve ordered firmly as Yasha's boots hit the floor and he rose up from his chair. He paused, knife in hand and eying Steve motionless for a moment before ticking in annoyance and sitting down heavily, stabbing the table with a glower at the star-spangled-Barnes.

Steve sighed wearily.

The younger Bucky was gaping, looking from person to person. So far he'd only met the depressive blue-eyed adult version with a dingy metal arm that scared him, and the cocky russian assassin version whom he'd developed an immediate dislike of. Now, there were other adult versions that actually looked like him, brown hair, brown eyes and no highly-visible robot parts, and one of them was wearing the stars and stripes and carrying a shield.

“Buck, Captain,” Steve greeted, “Stark found two more of you, according to Richards both are transdimensional not trans-temporal thankfully, so we don't have to worry about paradoxes at least this time.”

“Good, last thing I want to deal with is another kid version of me that I gotta tell to forget everything for the sake of the universe not exploding.” 

“It was kinda fun telling that one wee little one that he got to grow up to be Captain America though, knowing he wouldn't remember,” the one wearing a shield jacket said, pulling out a chair and sitting down at the table across from the youngest of the doubles. The youth in blue blinked oddly for a moment, coming out of his stunned stupor.

“Holy shit, I get to be Captain America?” he asked. The one in uniform reached up and pulled his cowl back, ruffling gloved fingers through short brown hair with a wry smile.

“Only if you're a good boy and shoot a lot of people before Steve kicks your ass and shoves the shield onto ya to make you learn some responsibility.” he answered, and Steve nudged him in the shoulder with a fist and a soft rebuke. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Let's not get into that right now. First off, welcome to another earth, technically it's their earth and it has some dumb alpha-numeric ID I can never remember attached to it to, but here we are all unfortunately,” Cap'n Barnes said with a vague gesture, indicating the room.

“Why?” the blue-eyed Barnes asked, and shield-jacket shrugged.

“AIM. Advanced Idea Mechanics” 

“Also stands for Asshole Idiot Morons” CapBarnes added, earning another nudge from Rogers. 

“They like to play with technology they shouldn't, and somewhere a few months back they invented a kind of interdimensional gateway device. The device was highly unstable and fractured during a test operation, causing energy fluctuations across a five-state area.” Steve explained. “We assumed that was the end of it until another Tony Stark showed up on our Tony's doorstep, confused and more than a little pissed off at his situation. They located a second Steve Rogers shortly after that, and then a second Buck... Sorry, James.” he corrected himself.

“Yeah, that's ok. Nobody back home but our Cap still calls me Bucky, so if you feel like talking to me, please either make it James or Captain, I'm kinda out of practice answering to anything else.... YOU don't get to call me anything but 'Sir' after that shit you pulled...” CapBarnes said, pointing with a growl at Yasha, who smiled and narrowed his eyes, pursing a mock-kiss at him.

“Have you seriously cheesed off every other me you've run into?” Bucky asked, and Yasha cast him an unreadable look.

“I may have stabbed him in unpleasant places, he deserved it ruining my work.”

“You decided for some reason known only to God and your own messed up head to throw away a chance at staying off the radar and living a normal life to set yourself up as a hitman for hire complete with a website and bilingual business cards!” CapBarnes snapped angrily, thunking his shield onto the table in disgust. Yasha nodded slowly.

“This I did, and was very good business, until you and tweedle-dumb show up and start making noise ruining all my fun.”

“Fun?” CapBarnes squeaked in incredulous fury.

“Ease off, he's still from the Russian Laundry days, I'm surprised he doesn't have bubbles coming out of his ears,” the Bucky in the shield jacket said.

“Am not 'brainwashed', just am not carrying around baggage of dead man's soul like you мудак,” Yasha muttered, glaring coldly at Steve as he toyed with the hilt of the knife he'd left firmly embedded into the tabletop.

“Wait, brainwashed?” Bucky asked, looking stricken and confused. “What the hell...?”

Yasha sighed a glare at the others.

“You see what you do now?” he nodded at Bucky.

“This... might be kind of awkward to explain...” Steve began.

“Might be?”

“Don't you ever shut up?”

“You going to make me, Stars-and-Stripes?” Yasha taunted.

“Oh my god, this is why it's a bad idea to have more than two Barneses in a room together EVER, especially the magical murder ninja one. Seriously, can you all just shut up, you're traumatizing the new people!” Stark's voice echoed forth from a massive video screen on one wall. Two of the five Barneses scrambled away from it in surprise.

“Holy shit!”

“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain... Actually no, pay ALL the attention to me because what I'm about to say is very important.” Stark said, gesturing as he spoke onscreen. There was a soft snort from somewhere, and he paused, an eyebrow lifted as he cocked his head slightly. “Something to say, Mister Barnes?” he asked, and the blue-eyed Barnes sobered at his words, then coughed and half-smiled faintly.

“Uhm... Wizard of Oz. Me 'n Steve snuck into the theater a few times when we was kids til we got caught, back when it came out,” He said, then shook his head. “Sorry, I just got the reference,” he added with a slightly embarrassed shrug.

“That... is very interesting to know, and makes you very unique among this particular crop of Barneses,” Stark said thoughtfully, and Steve frowned, looking towards the screen as another face appeared at the edge of the screen. The brown-eyed Tony said something quietly to the first, making him quirk an eyebrow before the blue-eyed original speaker looked back at the room's occupants, less-than-gently shoving the second Stark out of frame again before clearing his throat. He clapped his hands once before speaking again with a theatrical smile.

“Anyway, me and me have been very busy analyzing the data from the scans when you were all brought in, and the good news is, we think we can use Reed's gate to send you all back where you came from once we figure out and lock onto your worlds coordinates. The bad news is, until then, you're stuck here, but hey, I own a gigantic building with spare residence areas and the best security and chefs on the planet. Plus, there might be other people from your worlds here already, or still out there waiting to be found, so...” Stark shrugged. “Better than sleeping in the garbage, or a cell down at SHIELD,” he added, looking pointedly at the last to Yasha, who flipped him a deuce with a black gloved hand.

CapBarnes snapped a rebuke at him, and received a double-deuce in response. Bucky just looked lost, sitting in a corner looking bewildered until Barnes sat down next to him, nudging his shoulder in an attempt at reassurance. AgentBarnes did his best to defuse the escalating multilingual argument between Yasha and the Captain.

 

“I get the feeling we're gonna regret this later,” Steve said, and the onscreen Stark sighed heavily.

“I already do, Cap, I already do.”

 

\--=--

**Author's Note:**

> \--==--  
> The current Players:
> 
> The Barnes Boys:  
> (In order from eldest to youngest)
> 
> Agent Barnes, based on a variation of the early man-on-the-wall Winter Soldier books. He has a spaceship and travels around in space and once in a while other dimensional planes of their universe while saving the universe, but hasn't reached the stupid alien girlfriend nonsense of those books and never will because their timeline has diverged thanks to AIM's screwing around.
> 
> Captain Barnes, based on the 616 BuckyCap era. He and Natasha are still a thing “back home” sometimes, and he's anxious to return to his world, but doesn't mind working on a team with this world's Barnes. Dislikes Yasha for various reasons, most of which appear in their own story so they won't be recounted here.
> 
> Barnes, based on the MCU version, post-Winter Soldier film. He spent most of 'Age of Ultron' in hiding, getting his memory back, and trying to recover from decades of torture, so don't ask him about the flying robot army because he doesn't know it happened yet because of when he got yanked from their world. 
> 
> Yasha, Pulled from the earliest days of the Winter Soldier, before even the faintest glimmers of Bucky Barnes started to return to the empty shell of the young man pulled from the ice and revived by the soviets to become their pet killing machine. Amnesiac and ruthless, amoral and dangerous, with a wicked sense of gallows humor and an instinctive dislike of anything wearing the American flag. He spent the first two months before his discovery by the Avengers learning about the new world, blending in, and becoming a hitman-for-hire because he was bored and needed money.
> 
> Bucky, Doesn't know yet that in just a little over a year in his own world he'll probably lose his arm and go for a swim in the ice, eventually waking up like his new 'friend' Yasha. Well trained for his role in the war, but still headstrong and earnest with a habit of getting himself into trouble. Based on Brubaker's version of young Bucky, complete with smuggling contraband onto base as a kid and being a lovable dumbass sometimes.
> 
> The currently assembled Avengers met herein:
> 
> Steven Rogers, semi-retired Captain America, physically pushing into his 60s despite the Serum's best efforts at holding him in immortality. Loosely based on a progression of 616 Cap.
> 
> Tony Stark, Iron Man and billionaire with more dollars than sense that became entangled in the interdimensional AIM problem when his doppelganger showed up on his doorstep seeking help. Setting aside many differences with his own world's Steve Rogers he's helping to track down the others displaced by the dimensional ripple and working with his least favorite person and “dimensional sciences expert”, Reed Richards, to find a way to send them home. 
> 
> Anthony Stark, the “short brown-eyed alcoholic” version, also derived from the MCU version and knows the “Second Steve” from their own world. Manic and brilliant, and committed to finding a way to fix AIM's stupidity and send them all home as soon as possible.


End file.
